Your budget as a property owner is only as substantial as the schedule of income and expenses you must maintain to have excellent cash flow. It can be easy to forget that one month of missed rent or a month with many maintenance requests can endanger an investment property business. Odenton property management companies do everything they can to help property owners to establish a strong rent collection strategy, but things can happen that result in missing or late payments.
What can you do to ensure you don't get caught in a cycle of delayed maintenance due to rent nonpayment? Here are some essential factors to consider and a couple of valuable solutions to help you move forward with confidence.
How Maintenance Boosts Your Reputation and Saves You Money
To comply with most local, state, and federal landlord-tenant laws, there are minimum standards of keeping a rental property intact. For example, if you let your rental home become so dangerous that people get hurt in it or feel unsafe in other ways, that can become a liability issue. However, there are also smart financial reasons to create and stick with a routine maintenance schedule over time for all rental properties, including:
- Many home maintenance tasks are more inexpensive if you take care of them frequently. For instance, many forms of cleaning are lighter work if you power wash the siding every year rather than waiting several years between cleanings. In many cases, what would be a routine cleaning task when done periodically becomes a more costly replacement task if the dirt or grime has permanently stained the home.
- Conducting regular maintenance is one of the ways that a property owner can create a positive impression with renters. When they see that you keep the rental in great shape and address issues proactively (rather than waiting for a catastrophic failure requiring many repairs), they see their rental home as a better value and are more likely to stay for another lease term.
Remember that the opposite is also true: places known for minimal repair and maintenance can attract lower and lower quality renters—or leave you with no renters at all. You may struggle to market a property that hasn't been kept up, and you can lose money if your renters don't respect the space because they feel like you, too, don't respect it.
How Nonpayment Impacts Rental Income and Maintenance Budgets
With the importance of excellent maintenance services in mind, how can missing a monthly rent payment impact your maintenance plans?
If your renters come up short one month, with enough cash reserves, property owners can usually keep handling maintenance needs for the property. However, property managers know that a pattern of nonpayment can create a budget bottleneck, leaving property owners without enough cash flow (or reserves) to keep properties in good condition or respond to emergency repairs.
Owners don't want to ever face the choice of skipping repairs vs. paying other bills when a rent payment doesn't come in. In a worst-case scenario, months without rental income can mean maintenance requests aren't getting fulfilled, resulting in a more expensive repair in the future due to the delay now. This cycle can ruin the rental property business of even very conscientious property owners without an on-time rental payment solution.
How On-Time Payments Help Rental Property Maintenance
To maintain cash flow to cover expenses and maintenance, property owners must prioritize on-time rent collection. One of the best ways to do that is to work with an Odenton property management company to set up an online portal to make it easy for your renters to pay rent on time.
For renters who forget to send the rent check, an online portal that has a mobile-optimized option helps residents pay rent via a cell phone from anywhere and at any time. In addition, for renters who know they struggle to come up with the rent on time, some of these portals can send alerts and reminders to help them pay on time.
The right property manager can also use the same portal as a hub for organizing maintenance requests. Receiving maintenance requests in one place and organizing them for a maintenance professional helps reduce costs, maximize efficiency, and boost returns. With the right licensed Rent Estate™ advisors and consistent on-time rental income, routine maintenance and repairs never have to be delayed due to a lack of cash flow!
Choose a Property Management Company With a Guaranteed Rent Program
Renters Warehouse BW Metro offers a Guaranteed Rent Program that takes the pressure of rent collection off property owners (and maintenance expenses) by delivering rent to you—even when renters don't pay on time—while we handle the rent collection work for you! We see this as a way to keep your cash flow consistent so that you can make repair and maintenance choices with peace in your mind. If your current Odenton property management doesn't currently offer a rental income guarantee like this, reach out to learn more about our program and property management services!
